This book studies the travel accounts of five "lady travelers" to Mexico, the Southern Cone, Brazil, and the Caribbean. As eye-witness accounts, their books record the rise of independent republics in Spanish America. Women's travels provide a fresh look at indigenous and African populations in the New World and analyze women's social condition.

Adriana Méndez Rodenas is professor of Latin American and Caribbean literatures at the University of Iowa.

Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Transatlantic Travels in Nineteenth-Century Latin America: European Women
Pilgrims
Chapter 2: Mapping the Unknown: European Women's Travels and the Gaze or Enchantment
Chapter 3: Romancing the Nation: European Women's Travels in Nineteenth-Century Spanish
America
Chapter 4: Face-to-Face with the Other: Women Travelers as Ethnographers
Coda, At Home in the Heights
Bibliography
Index
About the Author